“The truth is that the masses grew out of the fragments of a highly atomized society whose competitive structure and concomitant loneliness of the individual had been held in check only through membership in a class. The chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal social relationships.”

There are some characteristics that most if not all forms of identity politics share. These are 1) a peculiar relationship between the self and the collective, 2) a tendency to measure marginalisation, 3) a strong focus on the concept of power and 4) the lack of some utopian vision. Let’s go through these characteristics one by one.

Cicero, his Roman contemporary Cato the Younger, and his Roman philosophical successors, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, went some way to developing Latin Stoicism, which stood some distance from its Greek predecessor, tempered as it was with Roman values and martial culture, which in an imperial, militaristic power such as Rome, was quite different to that of the intellectual, comfortable lives of many Athenian Greek philosophers.

In my honest opinion, Hungary is not ready for capitalism and civil society. Every attempt beforehand to establish these was more or less amateurish and resulting in more of a feudal outcome where we copied a Western nation without harmonizing any differences between the two states. Those who voted for Orbán did not vote because of hate and fear, although the campaign to demonize immigrants worked like a charm, they voted for FIDESZ because they wanted to receive a familiar sense of safety that they did not get from Gyurcsány or the previous cabinets since 1989.

We are faced with a large minority from an Islamic background, a significant amount of whom cherish beliefs and conduct themselves in ways that threaten the foundations of European civilisation. Not simply because they oppose our values, but that the simplest, most radical solution that comes to mind, is even more of a threat to us and our values. We appear stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. If Europe fights, it loses as a culture, it will die; if we try to swim away, we drown. But perhaps there is a third option.

“It does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupifies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

While Islamists subvert their societies in a religiously inspired manner, Muslim street youths do so in a more earthly fashion. The latter is highly advantageous to Islamists because, in the end, it is the subversion of non-Muslim societies by people who primarily identify as Muslim.

“When the world becomes too large to be controlled, social actors aim to shrink it back to their size and reach. When networks dissolve time and space, people anchor themselves in places, and recall their history. When the patriarchal sustainment of personality breaks down, people affirm the transcendent value of family and community, as God’s will.”

The people of Syria have a huge task ahead, and they may need our help in achieving it. However, it is a task that has been completed before, and can be completed again. The worst thing for Europe to do is take away the young and energetic, the bright and vibrant, the intellectuals and determined; for it is those people that Syria requires in this hour of need.

First, there’s the EU’s primary internal contradiction: EU federalism is an ideology that propagates post-ideologism; a culturally amorphous post-ideological world. A cosmopolitan easy going agnostic world, in which the single market and currency have made nationalism obsolete. Indeed, a world where the European Parliament invites a long-haired bearded shemale to perform in front of its building and announces him/her as “The voice of Europe” singing for equality, without anyone batting an eye.

The EU’s core problem, however, is that in its way of viewing and engaging the world beyond Brussels’ city walls, it is acting as if the world has already arrived at this so badly coveted post-cultural and post-ideological end station.

Steiner states that in the 18th and 19th century, philosophical and artistic progress led to such great heights, that we as Western Civilization thought we had reached a maximum. The emphasis of rationality in science secularised philosophy and with the Death of God, as Nietzsche proclaimed, we humans were from now on supposed rule our own lives and create our own values.

But with the death of God came something else. With the progress of science, we started to separate natural and traditional phenomena from a transcendent meaning or purpose.